Okay! You have made it through your
driver training, obtained your race license, and
procured a car that has passed “tech”.
Congratulations! You are ready to race. Most of
what I can share with you now has already been
stated elsewhere
on this site. All I will add to this is that your
job at this point is to survive, learn and finish
in one piece. If you can buddy up with some friends
who are experienced racers, do so. Your first
race weekend can and will be a somewhat overwhelming
experience. Surround yourself with as much support
as you can.

Towing a race car

One item that people don’t
usually consider right away when they first think
of going racing is that they will need to have
some way of getting the car to the track and then
back home again at the end of the weekend. While
I do know some people who actually drive their
race cars to the track, by and large I don’t
think this is the recommended approach.

To begin with most competitive race
cars are a long ways from street legal and while
it may be fun to drive a race prepped car on the
track it is, for many reasons, no fun at all on
the street. Additionally one needs to consider
the inevitable fact that there will, at some point,
be damage to the car that will render it un-drivable.
The downside to this should be obvious in that
you will now have to come up with an alternate
way to get both you and your car home again.

Enter the tow vehicle and trailer.
There are several pieces of advice I can give
you here. The first and perhaps most important
piece is this: Don’t scrimp on the tow vehicle
or trailer. Buy the best that you can afford and
then spend a little more to make sure. This will
be cheaper in the long run. The last place you
want to find yourself at the end of a long race
weekend is broken down on the side of the road
because you decided to “save” a few
dollars here.

When considering a tow vehicle there
are a couple of key issues that you need to keep
in mind. The first is towing capacity and the
second closely related item is the vehicles payload
capacity.

Towing
capacity is easy enough to understand and most
trucks and heavy duty SUV’s will clearly
state this in their sales literature. It is simply
the amount of weight that this vehicle can safely
pull. It gets a bit more complex when factoring
in the vehicles payload. Payload is also clearly
stated in the specifications section of a vehicles
owner’s manual or sales literature but is
often overlooked and seldom fully understood by
the perspective buyer.

Payload is basically the difference
between the curb weight of the vehicle and the
Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR). Curb weight
is how much the vehicle weighs all by itself with
a full tank of gas. GVWR is the total amount of
weight the vehicle can carry plus the vehicle
curb weight. Put another way it is the total weight
of the fully loaded vehicle. The difference between
these two numbers (GVWR minus Curb weight) is
called payload. Anything you put into the vehicle
including passengers, baggage, tools, spare parts,
coffee cup, etc., counts towards payload. Keep
in mind that the weight of the trailer on the
trailer hitch (usually about 10% of the weight
of the loaded trailer itself) counts toward payload.
Any more weight than the GVWR specifies and the
vehicle is loaded beyond capacity.

To make this clear let’s look
at an example. Suppose you buy a 1⁄2 ton
SUV with a towing capacity of 7,000 pounds and
you think to yourself well this is perfect because
I have done some calculations and my loaded trailer
only weighs 6,000 pounds. Great! Well maybe yes,
maybe no. If you didn’t look closely at
the payload capacity you could be in for an unpleasant
surprise.